


Green Pastures

by blueteak



Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Gen, Introspection, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/pseuds/blueteak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sidney reflects on how he came to be a vicar and Geordie wishes he'd used light opera instead of jazz to break up rows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Pastures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trillingstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trillingstar/gifts).



> Thank you for an amazing prompt, and Happy Yuletide!

Everyone always needed him, he’d reflected a few days ago, for everything from having veto-power over their marriages (not that they listened) to pruning the wisteria so the parishioners didn’t trip over it on their way to complain about him to the archdeacon. And now he’d lost one of the people who had first opened his eyes and made him believe how much he was needed, in both the small, wisteria-pruning ways and the quite large ones. 

As he spied Geordie edging around the still-looming wisteria (with Hildegard’s departure, Mr. Brandt had lost any hope of it being pruned, which was likely one of the reasons he still pointedly asked to be remembered to her even though he was well aware of her departure from Sidney’s life), he couldn’t help smiling. Some people also needed him to help them understand the truly terrible nature of light opera. 

Geordie, catching the tail-end of the smile, returned it reflexively. Not bad news on his end, then, which was a relief, because this time Sidney wasn’t sure he could help. 

After a moment, Geordie's smile faded into a look of concerned query. At first, Sidney thought Geordie had somehow divined his news. Fleetingly, he wondered whether James had served with Geordie as well? He certainly hadn’t always been in The Royal Scots, and….

But no. Geordie was glancing at the tumbler of whiskey he’d been nursing since the letter had come and the telephone had revealed its dire predictions to be correct. After a quick, stunned prayer directly he’d received the news, he’d turned to drink. He’d known James before he’d become a vicar, after all, and this was how he would have greeted the news of a friend’s death had he received it when he's been with James. In fact, they’d faced several deaths like this together, trading a flask back and forth. This just felt right. More sustained prayers would come later; he’d brought the whiskey to the church to ensure he’d get to that point. At home, he risked getting so blind drunk he'd not only numb the pain, but also forget to pray for James. The stained glass and crucifixes all around him here would remind him to pray. And remind him who he was now.

Geordie’s raised brow indicated he did not look like he had got to point of prayer yet. “That doesn’t look like the blood of Christ there, Sidney,” he said, clearly hoping he could easily jolly Sidney out of his melancholy. If it had only been concerns over women or his calling, he would likely have succeeded. Or even women and his calling. 

As it was, Sidney merely looked at him blankly. 

“I’m not judging,” Geordie continued quickly. “’Judge not, lest ye be judged and all that,’ only it is only half ten and even for me that’s a bit early, so for you—“

“At least you’re not telling me it should be a sherry because ‘That’s what vicars drink.’”

Geordie snorted. “I’d like to have seen your face. Who said that? They must not have known you very well.”

Sidney looked into his glass, already exhausted by the topic and ready to sweep away Guy and Amanda and any lingering resentments about how his life had turned out. 

“It was Guy, but that doesn’t matter now,” he said. And, for the first time in a long time, it didn’t. “A colleague and friend of mine’s just died.”

It wasn’t that James’s death made it seem pointless to question his purpose or even feel twinges of regret. It wasn’t a simple as that, and James would have been the first to roll his eyes over the idea that Sidney couldn't mourn his death and be regretful about his own relationships at the same time. 

But James would have made him more seriously think about what he wanted out of life. And would have responded, infuriatingly with “Are you certain?” whenever Sidney despaired that what he could be and how he wanted to live were contradictory in their discussion about what they planned to do once the war was over. Initially, most of these ideas for their future professions involved warmth and plenty of food, which were in poor supply. They’d started off joking about the more outrageous possibilities, but as the war went on and victory seemed more likely, they began to dare to hope that they might come to see a world in which they would actually need to consider what they wanted to do.

Sidney knew some of what he could do. He could march for twelve hours without feeling faint even after having given his rations to an ailing fellow in his unit. He could sing off key to amuse and annoy. He could explain that he loved that jazz appeared to have no rhyme or reason to its organization, seemed unpredictable, but ultimately had a higher purpose, much like God. He could kill someone to put him out of his misery. 

None of these things seemed immediately useful for any careers he could think of. It wasn’t until after Sidney had broken up an ugly row in Bradford when they were back in the U.K. for home defense training that James had declared, no hint of mockery or a joke in his voice, that Sidney might think of becoming a vicar. 

Sidney had broken up the row between American and British servicemen—something about how their new allies had too much flash and too little respect for British women. Sidney had told his countrymen that his own sister had attended dances with American servicemen—was anyone suggesting that she was a “Yankee bag?” And besides, were they not dancing to jazz that the servicemen had brought in this very club? 

The row had been broken up and the Americans had invited them to a dance on their base. Sidney, however, rather than being so flush with victory at the success of his first foray into international diplomacy that he'd accept the offer, had suggested meeting at a larger club in the center of town where--amazingly--Josephine Baker was performing. When asked why he'd balked at attending a party on the American base (luckily, only James had been able to tell that he had indeed balked), he'd explained that he wanted it to be a party at which GIs of all races could attend, rather than a segregated one on base. His parents, he'd explained, had always taught their children that to be prejudiced was the worst sort of sin--they should see Christ and an intentionally made and dignified person in everyone-- and when they’d heard of children being excluded from parties due to class, race, or religion, they’d made an effort to have more gatherings to which those children could be invited. 

It struck him then that he’d also attempted to make peace with a party, but he couldn’t solve America or the U.K.’s problems by continually inviting everyone to parties. There would never be enough rations for that kind of sustained effort, for one thing. Only he wasn’t certain of what else he could do. He was no politician.

It was then that James had suggested he might become a vicar, spread God’s message of peace and equality for all at a time when the world desperately needed to hear it. 

“But,” Sidney had said, stunned when James had made his seriousness known, “I’ve just stopped an argument with jazz. What kind of vicar would do that?”

“A good one,” James had replied. “And I know I’ve read that the Germans enjoy jazz too, at least some of them. You’ll be able to use that to defend them too, when the time comes.”

Sidney assumed James was pulling his leg about at least part of that—he had to be—but the more pressing concern was how James had known that rabid anti-German sentiment made him uncomfortable. He hadn’t dared—and this made him ashamed—voice his discomfort at the glee with which some of his brother- in-arms described their plans for killing Germans. “How did you know?”

“The grimacing does quite give you away whenever Carruthers or Banks describe just how many times--and where-- they’d love to bayonet old Goebbles and Goebbles-lovers, never mind that we don’t even have bayonets.”

“And not all the Germans are Goebbles-lovers! And how quickly we forget that this country produced people like Oswald Mosley.”

James had nodded, sitting back. He hadn’t needed to say anything more.

“But I can’t be a vicar! I’ve no idea how to talk to people about death and all that,” Sidney had said, the excuse sounding feeble even to his own ears.

The war ended. Sidney still didn’t know precisely who he was, but he did know of one more thing he could do. And not just could do, but was called to do.

James had helped him recognize that call, and had requested in his final letter that Sidney deal with “Death and all that” by officiating at his funeral. Sidney wished he were alive so he could wring his neck.

Over more whiskey—Geordie had only had a question about an old case, not a new one, and so had allowed himself to be persuaded to stay—Sidney told stories of his escapades with James, and about what he’d learned about himself from him. “I still cannot believe his final request is that I officiate at his funeral," Sidney said, waving the letter about with one hand while clutching the whiskey with the other. "Me. I’m the one who almost got us arrested for being AWOL when we were incredibly late getting back from a club, and he wants me to usher him into the next life. What will I even say to his family? To the rest of our unit?”

“Try what you just told me, Sidney,” Geordie advised, eyes still bright even after several glasses.

“Even the part about the jazz?”

“Yes. Though of course I wish you had broken up a fight with light opera. People of all nations may love jazz, but I’m also certain we all want to be pirate kings.”

“James probably would have wanted that, yes,” Sidney smiled, reflecting on some of the more ludicrous career options he and James had thought up. 

“Just out of curiosity….what did James become? Don’t tell me it was one of the more ridiculous things the two of you bandied about?”

“Would you believe he was a policeman?”

Geordie laughed, then gestured to the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “I believe He has a sense of humor. And that He knows what He’s doing. And so do you.” 

And so saying, he left Sidney to his prayers.


End file.
